Coupled bending and torsional vibration of a beam with in-span and tip attachments

In this paper, the coupled flexural–torsional free and forced vibrations of a beam with tip and/or in-span attachments are studied. First, a mathematical model is established, which consists of a beam with several tip attachments, i.e, a tip mass of non-negligible dimensions, a linear spring grounding the tip mass, and a torsional spring connected at the end of the beam. The modal functions of this model and the orthogonality condition among them are derived. For the purpose of verification the properties of the tip attachments are changed, and the numerical results obtained are compared with those given in the relevant literature. Effects of tip mass and distributed mass in-span on natural frequencies and modes are investigated for two cantilever beams with different cross sections. An application of the orthogonality condition in the case of a beam with tip mass is also presented for a forced vibration example.